Cinema: Peg-Legged That's Dancing!

Directed and Written by Jack Haley Jr.

In dance, the human body defies gravity, time and its own limitations; it is man's most eloquent leap toward godliness. Almost a century of the art on film --from the cooch dancers of the 1890s to the breakdancers of the 1980s, from the debonair Fred Astaire to the all-pro running back Gene Kelly--has immortalized that leap. So there is no need for this coffee-table film to strain as mightily as it does to present itself as a class act. That's Dancing! may display Grecian urns to establish the art's ancient pedigree; it may keep referring to movies as "the motion picture";...